"This second action is called revealed, in the strictest sense. The more a religion manifests of the real substance and nature of God, and of his relation to the universe and to man, the more it deserves the name of a divine manifestation, or of Revelation. But no religion which exists could exist without something of truth, revealed to man, through the creation, and through his mind.
"Such a direct communication of the Divine mind as is called Revelation has necessarily two factors, which are unitedly working in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlate of divine manifestation. There could be no revelation of God if there was not the corresponding faculty in the human mind to receive it, as there is no manifestation of light where there is no eye to see it.
"This infinite factor is, of course, not historical; it is inherent in every individual soul, only with an immense difference in the degree.
"The action of the Infinite upon the mind, is the miracle of history and of religion, equal to the miracle of creation.
"Miracle, in its highest sense, is therefore essentially and undoubtedly an operation of the Divine mind upon the human mind. By that action the human mind becomes inspired with a new life, which cannot be explained by any precedent of the selfish (natural) life, but is its absolute contrary. This miracle requires no proof; the existence and action of religious life is its proof, as the world is the proof of creation.
"The second factor of revelation is the finite or external. This means of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one, the Universe or Nature. But, in a more special sense, it is a historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren; and, as far as they themselves are true, they have in them the conviction, that what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth. They therefore firmly believe that it is independent of their individual personal opinion and impression, and will last, and not perish, as their personal existence upon earth must.
"The difference between Christ and other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part, and of the totality and substance, of the divine mind."—Vol. II. p. 60, seq.
The newly-found work, like other productions of the same period, can have only a disturbing interest for the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Protestant. For, in conjunction with previous evidence, it shows that the unbroken unity of teaching is altogether a fiction; that what afterwards became heresy was, in the latter part of the second century, held in the church of the primacy itself, and by successors of St. Peter; that the clergy of Rome, so far from owning the apostolic authority of their chief, could resist him as heterodox; and that the contents of the Catholic system, far from appearing as an invariable whole from the first, were a gradual synthesis of elements flowing in from new channels of influence brought into connection with the faith; and as against the approved type of Protestant, it shows that his favorite scheme of dogma was still in a very unripe state, and that further back it had been still more so; so that if he binds himself to the earliest creed, he may probably have to accept a profession which he hardly regards as Christian at all. But from the third point of view, which assumes that development is an inherent necessity in a revelation, and may add to its truth, instead of subtracting from it, the monuments of Christian literature from the secondary period have a positive interest, free from all uneasiness and alarm. They arrest for us, in the midst, the advance of theological belief towards the form ultimately recognized in the Church, and expressed in the established creeds; they render visible the beautiful features and expanded look of the faith, when its Judaic blood had been cooled by the waters of an Hellenic baptism; and though they leave many undetermined problems as to the successive steps by which the original Hebrew type of the Gospel in Jerusalem was metamorphosed into the Nicene and hierarchical Christianity, they fix some intermediate points, and make us profoundly conscious of the greatness of the change.
The author of the "Philosophumena," for instance, would be stopped at the threshold of every sect in our own country, and excluded as heterodox. He crosses the lines of our theological definitions, and trespasses on forbidden ground, in every possible doctrinal direction. Cardinal Wiseman would have nothing to say to him; for he is insubordinate to the "Vicar of Christ," and profanely insists that a pope may be deposed by his own council of presbyters. The Bishop of Exeter would refuse him institution; for his Trinity is imperfect, and he allows no Personality to the Holy Ghost. The Archbishop of Dublin might probably think him a little hard upon Sabellius; but, if he would quietly sign the Articles, (which, however, he could by no means do,) might abstain from retaliation, and let him pass. At Manchester, Canon Stowell would keep him in hot water for his respectable opinion of human nature, and his lofty doctrine of free-will. In Edinburgh, Dr. Candlish would not listen to a man who had nothing to say of reliance on the imputed merits of Christ. The sapient board at New College, St. John's Wood, would expel him for his loose notions of Inspiration. And the Unitarians would find him too transcendental, make no common sense out of his notions of Incarnation, and recommend him to try Germany. This fact, that a bishop of the second and third centuries would be ecclesiastically not a stranger only, but an outcast among us, is most startling; and ought surely to open the eyes of modern Christians to the false and dangerous position into which their churches have been brought by narrow-heartedness and insincerity. It will not be M. Bunsen's fault if our Churchmen remain insensible to the national peril and disgrace of maintaining unreformed a system long known to have no heart of modern reality, and now seen to have as little ground of ancient authority. Again and again he raises his voice of earnest and affectionate warning. As a foreigner domesticated among us, as a scholar of wide historical view, as a philosophical statesman who, amid the diplomacy of the hour, descends to the springs of perennial life in nations, as a Christian who profoundly trusts the reality of religion, and cannot be dazzled by the pretence, he sees, with a rare clearness and breadth, both the capabilities and the dangers of our social and spiritual condition. He sees that God has given to the English people a moral massiveness and veracity of character which presents the grandest basis of noble faith; while learned selfishness and aristocratic apathy uphold in the Church creeds which only stupidity can sign without mental reservations,—a Liturgy that catches the scruple of the intellectual without touching the enthusiasm of the popular heart,—a laity without function,—a clergy without unity,—and a hierarchy without power. He sees that our insular position has imparted to us a distinctive nationality of feeling, supplying copious elements for coalescence in a common religion; while obstinate conservatism has permitted our Christianity to become our great divisive power, and to disintegrate us through and through. He respects our free institutions, which sustain the health of our political life; but beside them he finds an ecclesiastical system either imposed by a dead and inflexible necessity, or left unguided to a whimsical voluntaryism, which separates the combinations of faith from the relations of neighborhood, of municipality, of country. With noble and richly-endowed universities at the exclusive disposal of the Church, he finds the theological and philosophical sciences so shamefully neglected, that Christian faith notoriously does not hold its intellectual ground, and in its retreat does nothing to reach a firmer position; but only protests its resolution to stand still, and raise a din against the critic or metaphysic host that drives it back. Is there no one in this great and honest country that has trust enough in God and truth, foresight enough of ruin from falsehood and pretence, to lay the first hand to the work of renovation? Is statesmanship so infected with negligent contempt of mankind, that no high-minded politician can be found to care for the highest discipline of the people, and reorganize the institutions in which their conscience, their reason, their upward aspirations, should find life? Has the Church no prophet with faith enough to fling aside creed and college, and fire within him to burn away mediæval pedantries, and demand an altar of veracity, that may bring us together for common work and "common prayer"? Or is it to be left to the strong men, exulting in their strength, and storming with the furor of honest discontent, to settle these matters with the sledge-hammer of their indignation? Miserable hypocrisy! to open the lips and lift the eyes to heaven, while beckoning with the finger of apathy to these pioneers of Necessity! Would that some might be found to lay to heart our author's warning and counsel in the following sentences:—
"While we exclude all suggestions of despair, as being equally unworthy of a man and of a Christian, we establish two safe principles. The first is, that, in all congregational and ecclesiastical institutions, Christian freedom, within limits conformable to Scripture, constitutes the first requisite for a vital restoration. The second fundamental principle is, that every Church must hold fast what she already possesses, in so far as it presents itself to her consciousness as true and efficacious. In virtue of the first condition, she will combine Reason and Scripture in due proportions; by virtue of the second, she will distinguish between Spirit and Letter, between Idea and Form. No external clerical forms and mediæval reflexes of bygone social and intellectual conditions can save us, nor can sectarian schisms and isolation from national life. Neither can learned speculations, and still less the incomparably more arrogant dreams of the unlearned. Scientific consciousness must dive into real life, and refresh itself in the feelings of the people, and that no one will be able to do without having made himself thoroughly conversant with the sufferings and the sorrows of the lowest classes of society. For out of the feeling of these sufferings and sorrows, as being to a great degree the most extensive and most deep-seated product of evil,—that is, of selfishness,—arose, eighteen hundred years ago, the divine birth of Christianity. The new birth, however, requires new pangs of labor, and not only on the part of individuals, but of the whole nation, in so far as she bears within her the germs of future life, and possesses the strength to bring forth. Every nation must set about the work herself, not, indeed, as her own especial exclusive concern, but as the interest of all mankind. Every people has the vocation to coin for itself the divine form of Humanity, in the Church as well as in the State; its life depends on this being done, not its reputation merely; it is the condition of existence, not merely of prosperity.